News

Apple releases iPhone 2.1 Software Update for iPod touch

By Charles Starrett ● Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Apple has released its iPhone 2.1 Software Update for the iPod touch. Pre-installed on all second-generation iPod touch units, the software offers Genius playlist creation, dramatically faster backups, improved email reliability, faster installation of 3rd party applications, faster loading and searching of contacts, and bug fixes for hangs and crashes caused by having lots of 3rd party applications installed, and other problems. The software is currently available through the Update feature in iTunes, is a free download to all iPod touch users running software 2.0 or later, and is a $10 upgrade for all users using 1.x software.

Comments

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That post title makes no sense whatsoever. Are you trying to say that the iPod Touch 2.1 update has been released? The 2.1 update for the iPhone is completely separate and will be released on Friday.

I don’t consider the 2.1 iPod Touch and the 2.1 iPhone update to be the same. Especially because the iPod touch update includes Nike+ and the iPhone does not. But that’s a different discussion altogether.

Posted by Adam on September 10, 2008 at 10:23 AM (CDT)

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Sadly, the iPod touch update does not include support for Nike+ for the touch 1g. :-/

Posted by frank on September 10, 2008 at 10:39 AM (CDT)

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I don’t know why you guys are down on Charles over calling the firmware update “iphone 2.1 software update” because that’s exactly what Jobs called it during the keynote. In fact Apple renamed the OS for the Touch and iPhone the iPhone OS which I thought was a bad move in the first place, but it’s Apple you should be down on not the senior editor here.

Posted by Phoenixfury on September 10, 2008 at 11:07 AM (CDT)

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The post and Charles Starrett are completely correct. The update available through iTunes is labeled as “iPhone 2.1 Software Update for iPod touch”.

However I have installed it and do not see any new features, specifically the Genius playlists.

Posted by Greg Rozier on September 10, 2008 at 11:11 AM (CDT)

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I have the update installed and the Genius playlists are there. You go into playlists and then there is “Genius”. Also, when a song is playing, if you go to the tracklist there is a Genius icon, which I presume is a button, though I haven’t actually clicked it yet.

Most importantly, app installs are *much* faster, backups during sync are ridiculously faster, and so far so good when it comes to stability, but then it’s been less than 24 hours for me. It does look promising and it is absolutely, positively superior to 2.0.x. Definitely install it if you have an iPod Touch.

Posted by SteveJ on September 10, 2008 at 11:17 AM (CDT)

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Oh - it may be necessary to turn the Genius feature on within iTunes 8 before it will show up on your iPod Touch, because the way it works is that it has to gather up information about your music and then compare that its database. Without first having done that, I don’t think the iPod Touch has the information it needs in order to be able to create Genius playlists for you. I don’t have any comments on how well it works. I tried it once, briefly, so far. It is suppose to get better with time, so the initial stages of this probably won’t be so impressive.

Posted by SteveJ on September 10, 2008 at 11:19 AM (CDT)

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Greg, when playing any song tap your screen to get the playing scroll bar. You should see the genius icon there. When you tap that it then creates a genius playlist. Alternatively if you go to your playli8sts you’ll see genius on the very top where you can select a song manually to create a playlist.

Posted by Phoenixfury on September 10, 2008 at 11:22 AM (CDT)

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Nike+ may not be available in the touch 1.0 because the radio receiver would be missing? Once someone opens up a new iPod Touch and compare the first gen vs. the second gen there will be a new radio.

Posted by youngjm on September 10, 2008 at 11:31 AM (CDT)

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youngjm: well, i thought about that and - believe it or not - i have tried to use the nike+-receiver (!) ... still no luck!

Posted by frank on September 10, 2008 at 2:25 PM (CDT)

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Does this patch fix the outstanding issues with updated apps not properly being loaded or synching not properly updating play counts of individual files?

Posted by Beau on September 11, 2008 at 5:20 AM (CDT)

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The good: app installs and backups are now the speed they should have been all along.

The bad: Podcast description bug (screen-tapping during a podcast should bring up the Description, not the Lyrics, like every other iPod in the world does) still not fixed, and inverting the device still does not invert the screen. (Not essential, but for those of us who plug the decide into the Line In jack on a car stereo, it would be nice to flip it so the jack is at the top and not have to read it upside-down.)

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YIKES I updated my 3G iPhone to 2.1 and now it plays my songs in random order!!! Have updated everything, iTunes 8, etc, turned on Genius feature; but if I hit ‘next song’ it shuffles to a random one; ditto with the double-click capability of the headphones; have I missed something? - HELP!

Posted by Marc on September 13, 2008 at 1:31 PM (CDT)

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If i update my Ipod touch 16GB to software version 2.1, will it format it and erase all the songs?

Posted by Sarah on October 26, 2008 at 8:46 PM (CDT)

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No, Sarah it will not format and erase all songs. It backs up the iPod before initiating the new software.